Vermont
Vermont
Release Date: Mar 18, 2014
Genre(s): Electronic
Record label: Kompakt
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy Vermont from Amazon
Album Review: Vermont by Vermont
Very Good, Based on 6 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
You could infer quite a lot about Vermont from some of the titles on their debut album, particularly Rückzug and Übersprung. They respectively translate as "retreat" and "breakaway". On one level, they're words that fit with the mood of an album that also features tracks named after a region of Lanzarote and a North African desert wind. But they seem to tell you something, too, about the Vermont project itself.
Based on rating 4
It takes a certain confidence for an artist to withdraw from what made them popular in the first place. In the case of Danilo Plessow (aka Motor City Drum Ensemble) and Marcus Worgull, they seem to have it in spades. The past releases of these two German producers have been bouncy and zippy. Worgull, in particular, has been going through a very productive phase recently.
Based on rating 3.5/5
Even against the flood of nostalgia-fueled kosmische over the last five or six years, ears surely perked up on learning that Danilo Plessow (better known as Motor City Drum Ensemble ) and Marcus Worgull of Innervisions had teamed up to try their hands at this sort of sound under the name Vermont. Add to that a list of contributors that includes people like Jaki Liebezeit, the legendary Can drummer, and it seemed like a shrewd marriage of minds.For their debut self-titled album on Kompakt, Plessow and Worgull had informal jam sessions at Plessow's Cologne studio with no specific outcome in mind. The result is 14 very self-contained, economical sketches that rarely test your endurance the way so much of today's bedroom kosmische does.
Based on rating 7/10
Kompakt Records' ability to market itself not just as a label but as a brand has brought together a number great and clearly defined collaborations within its roster, from Burger/Voigt to Supermayer. The release of the debut LP from Vermont marks the first time Kompakt has put out a collab featuring two artists who have never recorded for the seminal label.On Vermont, German electronic purist Marcus Worgull and fellow countryman and house aficionado Danilo Plessow (of Motor City Drum Ensemble) explore electronic music's experimental and unfettered beginnings. Pulling together 14 analogue-crafted instrumentals, Worgull and Plessow forgo the low end, allowing tracks like "Sharav" and "Macchina" to sputter along slowly.
Based on rating 6.4/10
Vermont is a new project from Germans Danilo Plessow and Marcus Worgull. For Plessow, better known as Motor City Drum Ensemble, it represents the first significant dump of new material since his wildly popular Raw Cuts series—dusty, sample-based house ravers—put him on the map at the end of last decade. The album, a collection of percolating synthesizer landscapes, represents a new direction for both, one that borrows from Germany's storied history of outre music in both form—the influence of artists like Popol Vuh and Hans-Joachim Roedelius is undeniable—and function: Can's Jaki Liebezeit guests on drums.
Opinion: Very Good
Welcome Vermont – no, not the American state famous for autumnal foliage, dappled bridges and Ben & Jerry’s ambrosial deliciousness. This is a pairing of German visionaries – Innervisions’ Marcus Worgull and Danilo Plessow of Motor City Drum Ensemble fame – who are hellbent on subverting electronica and Krautrock with their eponymous debut. Thankfully, their label – the legendary Kompakt – is more than willing to let them.
'Vermont'
is available now